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Sunday, 18 March 2012

Hard times.

Never fear, I am still here, and I have not given up on this blogging attempt like I have so many others. I'm just going through an especially difficult time at the moment with the day job. Or should I say the morning, noon and night job? Or at least that's how it feels.

I am beyond exhausted. What spare time I do get I'm spending having a prolonged internal scream of despair. All right, maybe that is totally melodramatic, but I do feel like when I'm not working I'm just waiting until I have to go back in to work. Which isn't right. I should be enjoying my mornings off like today, instead of dreading the next 10 hours of stress and grind.

I made a realisation this morning. I am in the pursuit of freedom. I think that is what all this, (the blog, my 'Chloe and the Chimera' business, my top secret project that might be taking place in the next few months), is all about. It's all an attempt to attain freedom. The freedom to awake and not feel like a lead weight has dropped on my head in the shape of Work. And by Work, with the capital W, I mean the daily grind. The activity you have to do in order to earn enough money so that you can provide enough food and shelter, and hopefully have enough left over in order to have the freedom you desire at the weekend.

This has never, as a concept, made sense to me. I grew up with two parents, both self employed, both running businesses. They weren't necessarily that successful, or that profitable. They didn't always have a grin plastered on their faces. But they were able to go to country houses and call it research. And they could buy magazines to read of an evening and that would be ok, because that was work too. I would love to be able to go out to dinner, and call it research. I would love to force my self up at 6am to go to a flea market because that's work! I don't expect it to be easy. I don't expect to be super rich. I sure as hell don't expect to always be grinning because life is so good. But I do expect to get a sense of satisfaction from making my own decisions, which is a huge part of the freedom I want. (Of course another aspect of the freedom I want is to be able to run around in the country side when ever I want, but that's something I'm going to work on!)

The freedom I'm talking about I suppose, is the feeling you get when you form your own future. The feelings of decision making, anticipation of achievement and the achievement it's self. Whether it is skiving off for an afternoon to sit in a sunny beer garden with a view, or buckling down and working until dawn, both decisions get results, either that of recuperation, or a product made for instance. But both choices were yours, as are both results, and the enjoyment of the process itself.

Where as in the world of Work (note the capital) your time, both working and relaxing is dictated to you. Your achievements are often not your own. If there is bad management there is little you can do about it. Helplessness and despondency descend.

Now I'm not saying everyone's world of work is like this by any stretch! But those of us who have a World of Work...as in "Ugh. I have to go to Work in an hour and forty-five minutes and I stall haven't got dressed, and I couldn't want to go and wait on a pub on mothers day with about 90 covers booked in the time I'm there any less! Ugh. Plus I haven't done the laundry, or made any lunch yet. I'd better stop writing. I want to curl in to a ball and whimper quietly please." Y'know, that sort of Work...!

I can't be alone in pursuing a sort of freedom when it comes to work surely? I'd like to run my own pub along side Chloe and the Chimera. I know I'd do things very differently to where I'm currently working. Id be able to make my own decisions. My time would be my own, as in, the things I do today will impact the things I must do tomorrow, and these things will achieve a goal. Rather than at Work, where the things I do today make no difference, I am still going to be coming in tomorrow to earn the same amount of money doing the same things that I did yesterday.